#Quohotos' unhinged rants no one asked for

[quohotos]

So about the Serpents in the Prophecy of Bane...

I'm almost certain this is an allusion to Jules Verne's seminal piece of speculative fiction about going underground Journey to the Center of the Earth. Exerpt from the Wikipedia page:

The story begins in May 1863, at the home of Professor Otto Lidenbrock in Hamburg, Germany. While leafing through an original runic manuscript of an Icelandic saga, Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel find a coded note written in runic script along with the name of a 16th-century Icelandic alchemist, Arne Saknussemm. When translated into English, the note reads:

Go down into the crater of Snaefells Jökull, which Scartaris's shadow caresses just before the calends of July, O daring traveler, and you'll make it to the center of the earth. I've done so. Arne Saknussemm

Lidenbrock departs for Iceland immediately, taking the reluctant Axel with him. After a swift trip via Kiel and Copenhagen, they arrive in Reykjavík. There they hire as their guide Icelander Hans Bjelke, a Danish-speaking eiderduck hunter, then travel overland to the base of Snæfellsjökull.

In late June they reach the volcano and set off into the bowels of the earth, encountering many dangers and strange phenomena. After taking a wrong turn, they run short of water and Axel nearly perishes, but Hans saves them all by tapping into a subterranean river, which shoots out a stream of water that Lidenbrock and Axel name the "Hansbach" in the guide's honor.Édouard Riou's illustration of an ichthyosaurus (which is actually more like a mosasaurus) battling a plesiosaurus.

Following the course of the Hansbach, the explorers descend many miles and reach an underground world, with an ocean and a vast ceiling with clouds, as well as a permanent Aurora giving light. The travelers build a raft out of semipetrified wood and set sail. While at sea, they encounter prehistoric fish such as Pterichthyodes (here called "Pterichthys") Dipterus (referred to as "Dipterides") and giant marine reptiles from the Age of the Dinosaurs, namely an Ichthyosaurus and a Plesiosaurus. A lightning storm threatens to destroy the raft and its passengers, but instead throws them onto the site of an enormous fossil graveyard, including bones from the Pterodactylus, Megatherium, Deinotherium, Glyptodon, a mastodon and the preserved body of a prehistoric man.

So that's our culprit. That basically fits the description of the Serpents. Thought that was just a cool detail and reference.

The underground jungle is an element that you could potentially say is also an allusion to Verne, though I think the version in the underland chronicles is significantly different since the depiction in Journey to the center of the earth has light from above whereas all the plants in the underland are basically carnivores and/or feed off of volcanic heat.

It's also possible that this allusion is not deliberate, as much like War of the Worlds, Journey to the Center of the Earth has basically been subsumed into pop culture cannon and referenced so many times that a lot of it's unique elements have just become tropes. Dinotopia also used dinosaurs in a cave surviving the asteroid, Minecraft, Terraria, Spelunky, Noita, and basically any other video game that involves digging will at some point put a Verne styled underground jungle in there.

One YA series that leans really hard into the Journey to the Center of the Earth inspirations is the Tunnels series. I actually read them in 6th grade to attempt to scratch my TUC itch. Let me tell you, they're not as good and don't even come close. Whereas TUC has some tasteful allusions, Tunnels goes all in. The underground people are more evil (if that's possible) and are intent on wiping out all life on the surface. Worst of all, it's set in England!!! There's cool world building, but no giant talking bats so I have no choice but to award it zero stars. It was supposed to be turned into a movie in 2009 and all the books got stickers for that... said movie appears to have never materialized.

Idk, something I thought about while listening to today's @returntoregalia episode

Okay bonus details about how I made this connection: As a kid, wishbone would come on once a week at like 4 pm or something, I didn't get to see it often, but I vividly remember one of the episodes. For anyone who doesn't know, wishbone was PBS show that followed a dog and his human family as they go through some struggle that wishbone (the dog) finds allegorical to a piece of classic, public domain literature. The episodes are split in half with the parts in the present, and the reenactments within the dog's imagination of the classic piece of literature. In one of the few episodes I caught was about Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. I do not recall how this novel was relevant to the characters lives, all I know is that it's way to long to fit into half of a 20 minute episode, so they had to really rush through a lot of parts. In one shot the characters are in this jungle and they run away from a Plesiosaurus puppet.

#Tuc #the underland chronicles #Gregor the overlander #tuc speculation #Journey to the Center of the Earth #return to regalia #return to regalia podcast #Quohotos' unhinged rants no one asked for #I did not proof read this. You're going to find typos

[quohotos]

Man, I really feel bad for the Dinotopia guys. They built this whole intricate, creative, enrapturing world, and it was going to be the next big thing. It was gonna be the next franchise. They got George Fucking LUCAS to make a screen adaptation of it. Yeah, the starwars guy. Then midway through production he realizes how much he loves making movies and decides to ditch your project and make the prequels instead. They say there's no bad blood but... man it would fucking kill me to go to the theater and see Naboo and think "Fuck, that coulda been waterfall city"

There still was a franchise. They did eventually make spinoff paperback novels and video games and there were even a couple screen adaptations, but they were done by Lifetime and Hallmark. The lifetime one is actually surprisingly good given its budget. It tells a story that mirrors the structure of the original picture book, two brothers get marooned on Dinotopia, one of them rides a pterosaur and then they have to stop a dude named Krab from stealing a crystal that he needs to make an ancient machine get him off the island... but it's not a reboot or anything, it's the same continuity as the books. I guess guys named Krab really do be stealing crystals every generation or so. It's not really that bad of a series but damn it could have been George Lucas!

I dunno, I just find myself thinking about it. It was a uniquely artistic and non-violent series for its time. All of the dinosaurs and people live in harmony. There used to be a steampunk cyber empire of capitalists who tried to replace dinosaurs with the coolest looking robots you could imagine, but then there was a revolution and they all live in communistic harmony with no real currency. Each according to their need, each to their own ability. All that Jazz.

I'm certainly more normal about it than I am say The Underland Chronicles but I still find myself thinking about those gorgeous communist dinosaur picture books. In another reality, Battleborn won over Overwatch, Galidor never got its budget cut and was actually a smash success, Warner bros actually did something with the TUC film rights, and Kids in the 00s grew up with Dinotopia instead of the Starwars prequels.

#And no hate to the starwars prequels. I actually unironically enjoy them a lot which probably surprises no one #Dinotopia #dinosaurs #Quohotos' unhinged rants that no one asked for #ooh that's a new tag. I guess this will be a series

[quohotos]

We didn't have cable growing up, so me and my siblings were strictly PBS kids. I remember that our station had these little segments that were maybe at most four minutes long to fill out between shows, usually highlighting the story of some extraordinary kid. There was a kid who made stuff out of duct tape, there was a kid who designed surf boards, there was a kid who did claymation, a kid who climbed all the mountains in north america, etc.

And then there was a kid who got a bit more time. He was a hockey player, but he had both of his legs amputated below the knee at age 6. I must have been 5 at the time, but somehow my brain just made the connection "This what all hockey players are like. You have to decide by age six if you want to play hockey or not, and if you do what to play it you gotta get your legs amputated. Look at him, he can still walk on metal prosthetics, it's not thaaaaaat bad."

My 6th birthday was coming up and I was really nervous, trying to decide if I wanted to play hockey or not, I had to make the decision. I would like to add that no one in my county played hockey, there were no ice skating rinks, heck it only snowed up in the hills and never at my house except VERY rarely. Ultimately, I decided that no, I would not get to play hockey in this lifetime, and I would keep my legs.

Then I heard that my cousins on the other side of the country had started playing hockey and were doing really well at it. I just took it for granted that yeah, they have metal legs now. That's neat. Then when we finally went to visit them I remember staring at their legs and being like... how are those still made of flesh? You play hockey right????? HOW? How are you not being dominated by your cyborg brethren who have been playing with metal legs since age 6?

Of course I didn't say anything I just sorta marveled in silence and then eventually realized that no, you don't need to amputate both your legs below the knee to play hockey.

It's just weird when you're so young and you'll just come to a definitive, incorrect understanding about reality and go on believing that for so much longer because no one bothers to correct it for you.

#Quohotos' unhinged rants that no one asked for #PBS #PBS kids #hockey

[quohotos]

When I was a little kid, must have been 13 or 14 I played a lot of minecraft multiplayer. There were some servers that had a lot of cool plugins, and there was some interesting nuance for what was possible with a plugin serverside vs. what was required with a mod.

An iconic plugin at the time was one called Mob Disguise (often abbreviated to MD). With a single command you could disguise yourself as another mob, or as even another player. There were entire games built around this premise, or sometimes it was just a bonus feature on a pay to win server.

What was interesting was that it was server side. You couldn't see it yourself, even in third person you'd still just be your own skin. You just had to take it on faith that everyone else saw you as the mob you disguised into. What made the mob disguise plugin so important was not how it made you look or feel, but was how using it made other people interpret you.

There's a larger philosophical point here about society or something but I'm not a sociologist. Trust me this is deep and poetic.

#Quohotos' unhinged rants that no one asked for